


Alternate Destiny

by SeekingIdlewild



Category: Stargate Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Pre-Slash, Twin Destinies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-05 00:45:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1799269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeekingIdlewild/pseuds/SeekingIdlewild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn't Rush who stayed behind on Destiny after the disastrous attempt to dial Earth from inside a star – it was Young.  Now Young has delivered his warning to the alternate version of Destiny's crew and he's ready to join his own departed shipmates in death.  Rush, however, has other plans for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alternate Destiny

**Author's Note:**

> This fic, like my other SGU fics, is all [Potboy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Potboy/pseuds/Potboy)'s fault.

Young gripped the observation deck railing and stared bleakly through the window.  Before his gaze, Destiny – _his_ Destiny – was slowly breaking apart.  Already the air was becoming a thick, living thing in his lungs.  He breathed in the heat and smoke and refused to give into the urge to cough.  His eyes began to water, but he didn't wipe the tears away.  He embraced the discomfort, wrapped himself up in it and concentrated only on the sting and burn.  It felt like cleansing fire.

The team that had crossed over from the other Destiny – those younger, more fortunate versions of his crewmembers – would be heading back to the gate room soon.  He hoped they had gathered enough supplies to keep their Destiny in working order for as long as necessary.  But he would not be joining them.  His place was here.

There was a hiss of a door opening, and then a familiar voice cut through his reflections.  "You are not going down with this ship, Colonel," Rush said from behind him. 

Great.

Young didn't bother to turn.  "You think you know me so well, Rush."

Soft footsteps padded up behind him, and then Rush was in his peripheral vision, leaning with his back against the railing so he could examine Young's face.  "Not remotely," Rush admitted.  "But I have had time to observe you.  I had a feeling I knew what the loss of your crew would do to you."  He tilted his head to one side slightly, then flashed a brief, humorless smirk.  "You think it's your fault, of course."

"It _is_ my fault," Young said through gritted teeth, turning a resentful gaze on Rush.  "The final decision to make the attempt to dial Earth was mine.  You warned me repeatedly about the dangers involved, but I decided it was worth the risk.  I was wrong.  Then I sent you – the _other_ you – through the gate, thinking I was saving your life."

"Yes…" Rush said thoughtfully.  "I'm curious as to how you managed that."

Young thought back to that chaotic moment in the gate room when everything was going to hell and it was clear that no one who remained on Destiny would survive.  Rush had been determined to stay and keep the wormhole open, but Young hadn't been about to leave a man behind.  Wasn't it the captain who was supposed to go down with his ship?  However important Rush's role on Destiny had been, he was no captain.

"You had already done the hard part in terms of keeping the wormhole as stable as possible.  You just needed someone to monitor it.  That much, I could do," Young said.  "So I told you to go.  You were pretty stubborn about it, but I finally convinced you that since you're the one who had had the greatest opportunity to explore Destiny's database, you owed it to mankind to go back to Earth and pass on everything you knew."

Rush shook his hair from his eyes and looked vaguely amused.  "I can see how that might be effective.  Use my own work against me.  That's possibly the only way to guilt me into doing something I don't want to do.  Clever."

Young's throat tightened and he looked away again, toward the star that would soon consume this ship and, preferably, him with it.  "Not as clever as I thought.  You died."

"No, _he_ died," Rush corrected.  "I'm still here.  Because of you.  Because you came back to warn us not to make the same mistake that you did."

Young huffed out an exasperated laugh.  "Are you trying to _comfort_ me, Rush?"

"I'm _trying_ to prevent a criminally wasteful death."

Young turned back to him.  Rush was watching him with hawk-like focus, his expression an odd blend of curiosity and concern.  Young wondered what the man could be thinking right now.  Impossible to guess.  This whole conversation had already taken on a vaguely surreal quality, but what the hell?  His life was literally collapsing around him.  He had nothing better to do than hear Rush out.

"You're going to have to explain that one to me Rush," he said quietly.  "My understanding was that you don't even want _one_ of me around, so what could possibly make you want another?  I thought I was the wrong man for the job.  Didn't I just prove that you were right about me all along?"

Rush glanced back over his shoulder, taking in the view of Destiny's downfall.  His shoulders shook briefly in what appeared to be a silent laugh, and Young had to tighten his grip on the railing to keep from seizing him by his slender throat.  But when Rush met his eyes again, his gaze wasn't mocking.  It was almost… sad.  Or earnest.  Yes, this was Rush's painfully sincere expression.  The one that was so dangerous because it meant he was about to be honest, and honest Rush was sometimes even harder to take than lying, manipulative Rush. 

"You did, Colonel," he said quietly.  "You made a mistake.  Now you have to decide whether to live with it or not.  You could lie down.  Give up.  _Die_.  But it's not going to help your shipmates.  It's not going to help us, either.  It's just going to end your pain.  And maybe you should ask yourself this question: is that really what you deserve?"

Oh… oh Christ, no.  Young wasn't going to listen to any more of this.  "What the _fuck_ do you want from me, Rush?" he hissed.  There was a subtle tremor running throughout his body, and suddenly it wasn't just the smoke and fumes in the air making it hard to breathe.  "You've got a commander.  You've got a version of me who hasn't completed fucked everything up and ended eighty lives.  You have _him_.  Why would you possibly want _me_?"

Rush's lips curved into a faint smile.  He looked… not quite apologetic, but possibly somewhere in that ballpark.  He shrugged.  "Well, Colonel… you're broken, you see.  He's been close before, but you?  Well, you're all the way there, aren't you?"

Young just stared at him.  Rush didn't need him to confirm it.  The jagged shards of a once-whole officer were lying there for his perusal. 

"Yes," Rush mused.  "You're broken.  So I have the opportunity to, let's say, rebuild you as I see fit.  Start afresh.  Give you the opportunity to be useful."

" _Jesus_ , Rush." Young  grimaced at a vivid mental picture of Rush as Victor von Frankenstein laughing maniacally over his stitched-together corpse.  "I don't know what the hell that's supposed to mean, so I'm going to ask you again: _what_ do you _want_ from me?"

"I want you to learn Ancient," Rush said calmly.

" _Excuse_ me?"

Rush smiled at him.  It was a genuine smile this time, and there might even have been the slightest hint of affection in it.  Or maybe Young was just hallucinating that part.  The fumes must have reached his brain by this point.  That was the only explanation for the bizarre turn this conversation had taken.

"The Ancient database is so vast and so deep that we haven't even scratched its surface yet,"  Rush said, becoming more animated as he launched into one of his favorite topics.  "My team and I don't have time to comb through it extensively.  Our focus has to be on the parts devoted to Destiny herself and certain other useful scientific and technological details on the side.  Things that will keep this ship and its crew safe and functional.  But there are enormous stores of information on Ancient history, customs, politics, military organizations, religions, art – _everything_ about their way of life.  If you can imagine it, it's probably in there somewhere.  Every word of it is valuable, and not just for academic purposes.  The more we understand about Destiny's creators, the more we'll understand about this ship and its mission."

Rush was looking at him expectantly now, hair in his eyes and hands held out before him as if he was holding a rare and beautiful object for Young's inspection.  Young just stared at him helplessly. 

"You want _me_ to go through all that information?  Why?  I would have thought I'd be the last person you'd choose," Young said, finding his voice with difficulty.  His head felt fuzzy, and he didn't know whether it was because Rush kept throwing him so off balance or because the air quality had deteriorated so substantially.  "Camile, or… or really _any_ of the civilians on that ship would be better qualified to interpret that kind of material than I am."

"And you can enlist their help as much as you choose," Rush said, making a sweeping, dismissive gesture with both hands.  Then he pointed at Young.  "But you're the one who needs to oversee it."  He held Young's gaze for a few seconds in silence, then shook his hair out of his eyes and sighed.  Apparently he could see that Young was unconvinced.

"You think I'd give this task to someone so narrow minded that they'd rather risk their life jumping through an unstable wormhole than devote themselves to Destiny's mission?" Rush asked softly.  His lips twisted into a bitter little smirk.  "Absolutely not.  I need the person working on this to be dedicated.  Various pieces of information buried within that database could become crucial to the success of the mission.  This ship was supposed to be manned by Ancients who already knew everything they needed to about their own history and the mission itself.  We're playing millions of years' worth of catch-up, and it would be much too easy to overlook something important.  I'm not entrusting this to someone who doesn't give a damn about anything but getting back to Earth."

Getting back to Earth.  Not "going home," because home for Rush meant Destiny.  Young wished his own mind was that flexible.  He wished that he had Rush's capacity for leaving the past in the past and keeping his eyes fixed on the future.  Maybe then he would be able to do this.  Maybe then the prospect of living another day wouldn't sound quite so much like walking through hell.

"I can't, Rush," he said, trying to keep his voice from revealing the cracks that ran through his heart and deep into his soul.  How could he possibly face it?  Day in and day out, surrounded by the doppelgangers of people who had once looked to him for protection and leadership.  People he had failed so drastically and irreversibly.  He didn't have it in him.  He was too broken to fix.

Rush looked back over his shoulder again, apparently checking the progress of Destiny's destruction.  If Rush waited much longer, he might not make it back through the Stargate in time.   He had no choice but to leave Young behind.  Young knew he wouldn't risk his own life trying to persuade or force Young to accompany him.  Rush knew better than anyone how to cut his losses and move on.

Except he wasn't quite ready to do so yet, it seemed.  "You know, the Ancients have been gone for millions of years," he said quietly, still look out the window.  "Some ascended, but most of them simply died.  Their legacy – the Stargates, Atlantis, this ship – it's how they live on.  _We_ keep them alive by learning about their achievements."  He turned to pin Young with a calm, steady gaze.  "The pursuit of knowledge is the finest and most constructive way to honor the dead."  He tilted his head, and the corners of his mouth twitched into the barest hint of a smile.  "Consider it an atonement, if you wish."

"Oh, _fuck you_ ," breathed Young.  He could no longer attribute all of the tears streaming down his face to the smoke.  He felt like he was breaking apart in earnest, just like Destiny, and there was no part of him, body, mind, or soul, that wasn't shrieking in pain.  " _No_."

"I'm giving you a reason to live," Rush pointed out.  "You should be grateful."

"I don't _want_ a reason to live!" Young choked out, his voice caught between a scream and a sob.  He shoved himself away from the railing, away from Rush, away from the view of the star and the dying Ancient ship.  Dying ship.  Dead Ancients.  Dead crew.  Oh fuck…

"Well that's tough shite," Rush called after him, a sneer in his voice, "because you know you can't die now.  You're not that selfish.  You want to go out like a hero, not like a coward."

" _Shut up!_ "

 "You know I'm right, Colonel."

Young knew.  He knew, and he couldn't even hate Rush for that knowledge.  Death had always been the selfish option in this scenario, but at least before Rush's proposal, he could persuade himself that it would have no real effect on the other Destiny or her crew.  But Rush had offered him a role.  A purpose.  A gap to fill.  A gap Rush knew perfectly well that Young couldn't leave unfilled now that he knew of its existence.  Because that's what Young was for, after all.  He held things together.  He made things work.  It had always been his specialty.

He stopped in his tracks and bowed his head, defeated.  Tears dripped from his face and sizzled on the deck plating.  He heard Rush approach from behind and, to his surprise, he felt a brief, comforting touch on his shoulder.  "Come on," Rush murmured in his ear.  "We're going to have to run for it."

Young wiped the back of his hand across his eyes and nodded silently.  They both turned toward the door and starting running.

And Destiny burned and collapsed in their wake.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Kudos and comments are very welcome, and please come visit me on [tumblr](http://seekingidlewild.tumblr.com/).


End file.
